Residents of any property typically utilize multiple third party utility services or products at the property such as electricity, water, waste-disposal, Internet, television, cable, home security, home warranty, telephone services, and a variety of other products and services. These services are generally provided by a host of different service providers, each operating in different geographic locations, offering different types of products and services, offering different product or service plans at various prices, and each requiring different capabilities at resident locations. For example, a particular Internet service provider may only offer Internet service through a cable line. Thus, if a home within the service provider's coverage area utilizes satellite service, and is not pre-wired for a cable connection, the particular service provider's Internet service may not be available to the particular home. Or, for example, certain service providers may only offer their products and services to certain zip codes or regions of a given geographic area. As will be understood, each individual product or service provider may have its own restrictions and requirements regarding the types of products and services it offers to certain geographic areas.
It is often the case that a resident or homeowner requires new activation of a particular service or transfer of a service from one location to another, for example, during a move of one's residence or purchase of a new home. However, switching all of one's home services can be a daunting and cumbersome task. For example, if a given resident wishes to acquire electricity, television, Internet, home telephone, trash service, water, and home security services a the resident's location, the resident typically must contact each individual service provider, provide identifying information associated with the resident and his or her residence, determine whether the given service provider actually provides services to the resident's location, identify the best product or service plan offered by the provider that meets the resident's needs, comparison shop against other product or service providers (if desired), and purchase such products or services for the location. Clearly, this can be a time-consuming and frustrating process for the resident.
To address this concern, some residents utilize a facilitation service to assist them in securing various third party products and services. A facilitation service generally interacts with a plurality of product and service providers to aggregate information for residents and provide “one-stop-shopping” for necessary products and services. However, the facilitation service faces similar challenges to those of the resident when it comes to identifying which products and services are available at a given geographic location. For example, resident addresses may be provided (by residents or other information sources) in varying formats, making it difficult to uniformly identify specific addresses that require service. Further, maintaining up-to-date information relating to product and service plans offered by each individual service provider, and the particular requirements (e.g., coaxial cable required, septic system not allowed, etc.) of each, can be challenging. Also, efficiently identifying the capabilities at each resident's location (e.g., existing home security system, satellite connection, etc.) often requires extensive question and answer sessions with the resident, which reduces the overall efficiency and productivity of the facilitation service and causes customer frustration.
Therefore, there exists a long-felt but unresolved need for a system or method that interacts with a user to combine and analyze various sources of disparate information relating to third party products and services offered at a user's address or geographic location, and suggest optimal products or services to the user based on the collected information to enable the user to select, purchase, and/or transfer the most appropriate product(s) or service(s) that fit his or her needs. There is a further need for a system or method that identifies particular products and services available to a user at the user's location based on the specifics of the user's particular location, the requirements of various products and services, and other user-specific information.